Exploring the Tertiary Efl Students' Academic Writing Competencies

Abstract

For tertiary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students, academic writing is not an easy task. It requires knowledge of the academic writing genres with their particular linguistic features. Moreover, academic writing demands good critical thinking. This research aims to explore the students' academic writing competencies that also focus on critical thinking. The research involved thirty-six first-year tertiary EFL students from a regular class of a private university in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The source for data collection was the students' texts. Three texts were selected and the students were categorized into low, medium, and high levels of writing achievement. The text analysis utilized functional grammar rooted in systemic functional linguistics (Emilia, 2014). The analysis shows that the students, regardless of their levels of writing achievement, have little control over the schematic structure and linguistic features of an argumentative writing. The text analysis also shows that the students' texts have some limitations as regards their critical thinking capacity. Still, a few examples of academic language were detected in the texts. The findings suggest that the lecturer should incorporate explicit teaching and cooperative learning activities to alleviate the students' difficulties and develop their academic writing and critical thinking capacity.

Corrections on Grammar, Sentence Variety and Developing Detail to Qualify Academic Essay of Indonesian Learners

“…The sentence problems arise from incomplete mastery of syntax in writing that is four awkward: sentence fragment, choppy sentence, run-on sentence, and stringy sentence. Aunurrahman, Hamied, & Emilia (2017) found that the students' texts have some limitations as regards their critical thinking capacity.…”

Exploring Academic Writing Needs of Indonesian EFL Undergraduate Students

“…Academic writing contributes crucial roles for students' academic purposes; papers, assignments, exercises and thesis for meeting their academic needs (Aunurrahman, Hamied, & Emilia, 2017;Ariyanti, 2016;Soehadi, 2008;Husin & Nurbayani, 2017;Sriwichai & Inpin, 2018;Yasuda 2014;Gillett, Hammond, & Martala, 2009). The experts agree that academic writing as a skill required for academic context has a significant impact on the scope of students' written academic papers in a university context to meet their degree.…”

Transforming Tertiary EFL Learners’ Meta-Linguistic Knowledge and Practices: A Longitudinal Case Study/Preoblikovanje metalingvističkog znanja i metoda učenja engleskoga kao stranoga jezika na tercijarnoj razini: longitudinalna studija slučaja

“…In contrast to ESL contexts, studies in EFL contexts are still limited. Aunurrahman et al (2017) showed that Indonesian college students' writing improved through SFL-based teaching, as exemplified by their good control of linguistic features of three types of writing (exposition, discussion, and response to literary works), such as students' use of theme-rheme patterns to construe fluent texts as required by different genres.…”

“…In contrast, studies in EFL contexts, especially at the tertiary level, are still limited, as most curriculum requirements still focus on structural accuracy, or in some cases teacher education is still not effectively enacted (Tran, 2007;Zhang, 2017). Even among the limited studies on teaching EFL at the tertiary level (e.g., Aunurrahman et al, 2017;Yasuda, 2015), these studies have focused more on linguistic feature changes in students' writing, separating students' meta-linguistic knowledge from their actual language practices. As such, there is still a lack of insight into how changes to tertiary EFL students' meta-linguistic knowledge influence their language practices, although "what learners will develop as cognitive resources for future activities is influenced by what they have become aware of" (Chen & Myhill, 2016, p. 101).…”

“…In English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts, many language learners from the elementary level to the tertiary level are exposed to the learning and instruction of grammatical rules when constructing/deconstructing sentences in writing and when reading texts (Aunurrahman, Hamied, & Emilia, 2017;Fu & Matoush, 2012;Tran, 2007;Yasuda, 2015). In this scenario, EFL learners gain limited linguistic knowledge about effective language learning, and thus fail to meet the academic expectations of authentic English communities where endorsed language literacy (e.g., reading and writing) involves language learners' knowledge of complex relationships between language resources and context as well as English language culture (Moore & Schleppegrell, 2014;Schleppegrell, Achugar, & Oteíza 2004).…”